Proliferation of asthma diagnoses and improved treatment over the past few decades has brought the humble metered dose inhaler to a pop-culture preeminence general reserved for more glamorous pharmaceuticals, like valium and prozac.

 As of December 31^st, those little air-way unclogging jets will turn just a little bit greener, thanks to the removal of chlorofluorocarbon-or CFC- based inhalants.

In one of the first and largest global-scale victories for environmentalists, governments in developed countries almost universally banned the production of CFCs in 1970s, after it was found their presence in the atmosphere drastically depleted a layer of ozone gas that protected the Earth from ultraviolet radiation.

 The prohibition has lead to small incidences of black market CFC production and smuggling of CFCs across borders, but the gradually decreasing costs of safe CFC alternatives has made has led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to call the Montreal Protocol that banned their production “[T]he single most successful international agreement to date.”